The National Park Service has decided to conduct an EIS on a proposal to drill for oil at Big Cypress National Preserve/NPS file

A decision by the National Park Service to conduct a more robust environmental impact statement on Burnett Oil Co.'s plans to drill horizontally beneath Big Cypress National Preserve to access oil reserves has prompted the company to withdraw its permit applications at least until it can see what if any changes in them the EIS might require.

A year ago Park Service staff said that a less stringent environmental assessment more than likely would be adequate to assess how Burnett Oil's plans might impact the preserve, a more than 720,000-acre wildland in Florida that lies north of Everglades National Park. At the same time, they added that the EA could point to the need for an EIS.

The decision to swivel to the more intensive environmental study was made recently.

"The National Park Service has determined that oil and gas exploration in Big Cypress National Preserve requires a full and thorough analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act," Superintendent Tom Forsyth said in an email to the Traveler. "The NPS decision regarding the path forward will be finalized upon notice published to the Federal Register. A projected timeline of action is not available at this time."

In a February 22 letter to Florida Department of Environmental Protection permitting officials, engineers working with Burnett said the Park Service's recent decision to complete an EIS prompted the move to withdraw its permit applications to the state "until the project is further along in the design process to adequately assess the Department’s permitting criteria."

While the Park Service owns the surface of Big Cypress, the mineral rights are privately owned and so energy exploration and development are possible. However, the issue of bringing more oil production to the preserve -- there has been oil production there since the 1940s, prior to establishment of the preserve -- has been a controversial matter dating back at least to the 1990s, when there were efforts to have the federal government buy the mineral rights from the Collier Co.

What is potentially at risk from drilling activities -- not just from the actual drilling itself, but also the supporting roads and other infrastructure needed to enable it -- is a landscape rife with threatened and endangered species and which is a conduit for roughly 40 percent of the water that flows through the "river of grass" through Everglades and into Florida Bay.

In 2017 and 2018 Burnett conducted exploratory efforts to determine whether there were commercially viable oil reserves beneath Big Cypress. Some of those efforts left the preserve's surface heavily scarred by ponderous vibroseis vehicles used to generate subsurface sound waves that geologists could review to calculate any reserves.

That exploratory work led Burnett, working for the Collier Co., early in 2021 to apply for the requisite state and federal permits to drill for oil. Burnett's proposed well pads would be located along Interstate 75 between Fort Launderdale and Naples and a bit north of U.S. 41 where Collier, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties meet. The company said at the time that it would reduce potential impacts to the preserve by using directional drilling to avoid the need for additional well pads. However, the work could involve construction of roads of 1.5 miles or more in length across the preserve's marl prairie to reach the pad sites.

Environmental organizations that want to see an EIS completed on the request to allow horizontal drilling said the damage from Burnett's 2017 and 2018 field work still has not been completely evaluated.

"... the proposed action here would continue the cumulative and significant impacts caused by Burnett Oil’s activities on the Preserve, which could jeopardize the quality of the water the Preserve provides to Everglades National Park and nearby communities, destroy Important Resource Areas, and jeopardize areas of the Preserve eligible for a wilderness designation. The proposed action would adversely affect a critically endangered species, the Florida panther, and other protected species," reads a portion of comments filed last month with Big Cypress by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

More so, the groups argued that the EIS must consider not just the current effort by Burnett to recover oil, but also take into consideration the potential cumulative effects of three other phases of operations the company earlier had indicated it would pursue in the preserve.

"Notably, neither NPS nor Burnett Oil explicitly state that Burnett Oil has abandoned the other three phases of the seismic exploration and subsequent development entirely and would not seek approval from NPS for these phases after Phase I is completed," the groups wrote in their comments. "The four exploration and subsequent development phases are closely related, immediately adjacent to each other, and constitute interdependent parts of the larger action to explore for and develop oil resources, which would have significant cumulative impacts on the Preserve."

Chuck Sams, the new director of the National Park Service, traveled to South Florida last week and toured Big Cypress and Everglades, but made no comment about the drilling controversy. A release from Park Service headquarters said only that Sams during his visit to Big Cypress "witnessed the importance of restoring the western Everglades ecosystem. Western flows of clean water must be restored, not only to ensure the preserve’s health, but also deliver on the Trust responsibility the federal government has to the Seminole and Miccosukee peoples."

Past Traveler stories pertaining to this project include:

Mixing Oil And Water At Big Cypress National Preserve

Army Corps Finds Big Cypress National Preserve Oil Exploration Caused Adverse Impacts

Army Corps Reverses Position On Oil Company's Impacts On Big Cypress National Preserve

Groups Want Florida To Purchase Big Cypress National Preserve Mineral Rights

Burnett Oil Inching Towards Drilling At Big Cypress National Preserve

Oil Drilling At Big Cypress National Preserve Might Not Require EIS

Geologists Share Their Concerns With Drilling For Oil In Big Cypress

Traveler's View: Interior Needs To Stand Up For Big Cypress National Preserve

Traveler's View: Biden Administration Should Block Big Cypress Oil Drilling